Wednesday, 25 February 2015

Transport for London (TfL) will be carrying out resurfacing on Streatham High Road, between the junctions with Gleneagle Road and Penistone Road.

The works will start on Monday 16 March and should carry on until Monday 20 April. They will be done through the contractor ConwayAecom.

The work will take place overnight between 21:00 and 06:00. TfL say that working at the weekdays with traffic management exclusively on off-peak night time hours provides the best chance to complete the works as quickly as possible, with as little disruption as possible.

The works will be divided into stages, always trying to maintain both directions of traffic flowing. However, diversions will be in place for local accesses.

During these works, between the 2 and the 27 of March, bus routes 50, 60, 109, 113, 118, 159, 249, 250, 255, 315, P13, G1, N109 and N133 will be diverted between Streatham Station and Green Lane.

The following side roads will be closed one night each to aid resurfacing works:

Friday, 20 February 2015

Streatham Green Party are supporting Streatham Hill residents who are fighting a huge property development being built overlooking their homes.

The residents have made a video warning others in Lambeth: "If this could happen to us, it could happen to you."

The development of six luxury five-bedroomed houses and six two-bedroomed flats by Kent-based Hambridge Homes was granted planning permission by Lambeth Council in January 2011 - but without having given the adequate notice they were legally required to do, according to local residents.

People with homes neighbouring the Pakefield Mews development between Wyatt Park Road and Wavertree Road, Streatham Hill, cannot recall receiving letters through their doors or seeing notices posted on lamp-posts before the planning permission was granted.

Some say the first they heard of the plans was when they woke to the sound of bulldozers in November 2013. Now they have 3-storey blocks of flats and houses being built directly overlooking their homes, bedroom windows and gardens.

The houses, which are on the market for over £1.2 million and are due to be completed in mid-March this year, appear not to follow Lambeth's own guidelines advising against balconies overlooking private spaces and the angling of glazing to avoid breaches of privacy.

Hambridge Homes, which currently has 42 developments in Lambeth, claims it is building in accordance with the planning permission granted.

But residents' repeated attempts to see those plans have been thwarted. They say those provided by Lambeth Council are consultation documents from 2010 and 2011 - not the plans dated 22 October 2013, which builders were working to when Green Party councillor Scott Ainslee visited the site recently. Councillor Ainslie is now pursuing planning officials to clarify whether building works are in accordance with the planning permission and whether public consultation requirements have been properly followed.

There are several causes of air pollution including domestic and commercial heating systems, construction, industry, cars, buses and taxis. Lambeth Council also incinerates its waste having an impact on air quality outside the borough.

Using data from TfL published on Green Assembly member Jenny Jones’ “how polluted is my road?” web site, we estimate that between a fifth and a third of pollution in Lambeth comes from buses, so we want TfL to clean up their fleet. This is one part of concerted action that both Lambeth Council and Transport for London need to take to clean up our air.

One option is retrofitting buses to lessen the pollution they give out. But this won't get buses to as high a standard as hybrid or electric options - and with Lambeth's very poor air quality, the issue needs to be taken seriously.

Wednesday, 4 February 2015

Cllr Scott Ainslie (pictured) and I were out today in Streatham, putting up diffusion tubes to measure the pollution in the Streatham area.

Deaths related to pollution in Lambeth are over 100 a year according to Public Health England (over 10 times the number of road casualty deaths).

We asked Lambeth Council if they would monitor air quality around local schools, but sadly Labour councillors voted against it. So we made a bid to the initiative Mapping for Change, which was successful, and got funding to do a community project.

The tubes have been placed in the local area to measure NO2 emissions. After four weeks they will be sent off for analysis, and we'll be able to identify pollution levels, and hopefully the hot spots which need to be dealt with.

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